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Murray Hill
Institute |
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| Contemporary Culture on the Nature of the Human Person: The Relevance of Edith Stein | |
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I. Revisionist Psychology and a Culture in Need of Change A number of years ago Time magazine published a special issue on women, which contained articles revealing a tendency towards a certain search for authentic values, with a return to the very nature of the human person. Mention was made of the nature of women and that they not sacrifice this nature in achieving their goals, that gender differences are better celebrated than suppressed, that the difference of woman does indeed make a difference, and that the heritage of values and priorities has been traditionally associated with women. As the issue of Time noted, recent psychological studies challenge the Freudian striving for autonomy as the mark of healthy emotional growth and provide instead relationality, or the interconnectedness of people, as the key to mental health rather than as a symptom of "dependent personality disorder."1 Research on the psychology of women and the development of girls shows that relationship colors every aspect of a woman's life. According to revisionist psychologists such as Carol Gilligan and Judith Jordan, the difference of woman "offers a way to liberate women and to transform society."2 If women's approach to life is acknowledged as authentic, they will no longer need to act like men. In the words of the psychologist Judith Jordan, co-founder of the women's studies program at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.: "What we are doing is more revolutionary than early feminism. We believe that the culture, which has been one of power, objectification and violence, has to change. Women's sensitivity to relationship offers a special gift in making that occur."3 The fact that these researchers contend that at the crux of the existence of women is the sense of relationship and their unique sensitivity to others, and the fact that it is precisely this responsiveness to others which is needed in order to change our culture is reminiscent of the trust which Pope John Paul II has placed in women, women who are and will be faithful to their nature; as he puts it: "In our own time, the successes of science and technology make it possible to attain material well-being to a degree hitherto unknown. While this favors some, it pushes others to the margins of society. In this way, unilateral progress can also lead to a gradual loss of sensitivity for man, that is, for what is essentially human. In this sense, our time in particular awaits the manifestation of that 'genius' which belongs to women, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance: because they are human."4 At this time in history, therefore, women, who are aware of their dignity and their vocation, can exercise an enormous influence in the world, precisely in the cultivation and in the care of the human person and in the restoration of moral values, a restoration which will prevent humanity's self-destruction. My goal in this paper will be twofold: first, to consider how the culture of the Western world has affected not only women but the family and sexuality in general; and second, to draw on the work of the philosopher Edith Stein in order to present a more adequate interpretation of the nature and vocation of women. When we consider the technological and economic progress made in the latter half of the twentieth century, there is no doubt that these advancements have not brought with them a commensurate progress in morality. We are presently confronted with a world-wide moral crisis, which in great part has its roots in the economic liberalism of the Western world, in which money and wealth have become the standard for everything, and where the economic market system imposes its laws on all aspects of human life, even in the area of human sexuality. This liberalism of the so-called "developed" countries has extended itself globally and has, according to Cardinal Ratzinger, permissiveness as its counterpart on the moral level. As Cardinal Ratzinger observes: "In the culture of the 'developed' world, there has, first of all, been destroyed the indissoluble link between sexuality and marriage."5 As a consequence of this first rupture, the link between sexuality and procreation has been severed. Separated from marriage and from the objective reason which justifies it, any form of sexuality becomes equally valid; no other reason can be found for it, other than the subjective reason of pleasure, of the individual's free pursuit of the satisfaction of his desires.6 And what is more, all the forms of satisfying sexuality are being transformed into "rights" of the individual and into another form of human liberation.7 And yet, there are times when people are outraged by this trivialization of human sexuality, by this uprooting of the human person from his profound nature.8 I believe that an example of this reaction of outrage is an article that appeared a number of years ago in Time magazine entitled "The Skin Trade." The article depicts how the human body, and more specifically human sexuality, has been objectified and utilized. As the author graphically states: "Desire has cash value; the market has no rules, possesses no scruples. Poor women and children are commodities traded on the street, products bartered, haggled over, smuggled and sold as hedges against hunger or as cruel but quick routes to profit. Souls do not count, only bodies, debased over and over [again]."9 We all undoubtedly recognize that society and culture need to change, that we can no longer permit ourselves to live in a so-called "system," in which each one is limited to the fulfillment of a function, as if we were machines. If we are not effective, productive, in a technical sense, if we do not dominate and have power, we are considered less than inferior. We live in a society in which the cult of efficiency reigns supreme and in which women have had to integrate themselves into this culture of production, often at the expense of their feminine identity. But a woman, like a man, is not reducible to a mere function, to the playing of a role. If human sexuality has been so debased through socio-economic movements, it is also true that manipulation of the human person has in addition taken place at a more sophisticated level: the level of science and technology. In the experiments of the latter, the fundamental and natural connections between procreation and sexuality are destroyed. Biological manipulation uproots man from his very nature: he is transformed into a thing, a simple product to be planned at will.10 As a result, man becomes an object of technical reason: an attempt is made to apply to man's very life the technical categories, that is, categories of dominion. The methods for the domination of nature are thus applied to the domination of man himself. The activist and productivist mentality of our age leads to a redefining or a reconstituting of the human person according to mere human projects, which eventually strips the person of individuality and of dignity.11 Moreover, when the link between sexuality and procreation is severed, when sex is dissociated from fecundity, then being male or female is no longer considered a determinate characteristic, as a radical and original orientation of the person. It seems then that little does it matter whether one is a man or a woman, since we are, after all, all the same, we are all simply human persons.12 In societies in which there is an attempt to make every type of function among men and women interchangeable, to the extent that sex itself is viewed as a mere function, sexual differences are then presented as something secondary, determined more by history than by nature, and thus capable of being changed as one wishes. We have only to think of how science and technology have aided in the trivialization of sexuality: transforming a man into a woman and vice versa. When sexuality is no longer rooted in a true anthropology, but rather is considered a simple function, then the being and acting of the human person is reduced to pure functionality, to the mere fulfillment of a role. Within such a framework, the being of the person is not something that is directly related to sexual diversity. However, equality among men and women does not exclude diversity, but rather demands it.13 Using a musical metaphor, the psychologist Carol Gilligan points not only to the equality and diversity of men and women, but also to their complementarity, in the sense in which the contrasting voices of men and women might blend. As she puts it: "One can think of the oboe and the clarinet as different. Yet when they play together, there is a sound that’s not either one of them, but it doesn't dissolve the identity of either instrument."14 Now with the shift in history and in philosophy from a consideration of man as homo sapiens to man as homo faber, and thus with the shift from the contemplation of the truth of reality to the domination of nature through action and making processes, we have ceased to look on nature so as to learn from it, we have ceased to read the language of nature which is also the language of morality. When sexual difference is no longer considered naturally inscribed in the person's being, then the human body as the incarnation of the spirit in a sexuated being is denied.15 The human body cannot be considered and treated as a mere complex of tissues, organs, and functions, on the same level as animal bodies.16 The human body is and appears essentially different; it belongs to a level of being which is qualitatively superior. Due to its union with the spirit, the body is the manifestation of the person itself. The human body is a constitutive part of the human person which manifests and which expresses itself through it.17 If we are given to reading the language of nature, we will observe then two clearly distinct sexes, which are complementary one to the other; and since the language of nature is also the language of morality, we will conclude that both men and women are called to destinies equally noble and eternal, but not for this reason less diverse.18 In the name of human nature then, a voice must be raised against the temptation to redefine the person and its destiny according to mere human projects. When there is no recourse to the language of human nature, then the laws of morality which are inscribed in man's very nature are replaced by the rules of technological and scientific know-how. As Cardinal Ratzinger magnificently puts it: "The good and the moral no longer count, it seems, but only what one can do. And that means that the measure of a human being is what he can do and not what he is, not what is good or bad. What he can do he may do. We should see that the human being can never retreat into the realm of what he is capable of. In everything that he does, he constitutes himself. Therefore he himself, and creation with its good and evil, is always present as his standard, and when he rejects this standard he deceives himself. He does not free himself but places himself in opposition to the truth. And that means that he is destroying himself and the world."19 Such a destruction of man is clearly opposed to the culture or cultivation of the person, which Pope John Paul II proposes. Given the moral crisis in which the human person finds himself and the problems confronting human sexuality in particular, it has become necessary to recapture the ultimate meaning of human life and its fundamental human values, which are in effect the values of the human person. "Only an awareness of the primacy of these values enables man to bring about the true advancement of the human person in his or her whole truth, in his or her freedom and dignity."20 And, as was suggested above, the woman's special sensitivity for the human person and moral value can in effect help to bring about the transformation of our present-day culture. II. Edith Stein on the Origin and Destiny of Woman In today’s changing times, many would have us believe then that woman’s nature has changed and is changing, that her destiny also is changing. Edith Stein, a German philosopher, educator, and feminist, a convert from Judaism to Catholicism, one of the holocaust victims, who died at Auschwitz in 1942, would certainly refute the changing nature of woman. As a close collaborator of Edmund Husserl, initiator of the phenomenological school, which investigates the essences of things, Edith Stein came in contact with intellectuals whose life was marked by a deep spirituality. As a university student, although she considered herself an atheist at the time, she was later able to write that "whoever searches for truth is actually searching for God, whether he acknowledges it or not."21 Under the influence of Husserl, she turned to medieval Scholasticism and to St. Thomas Aquinas. But it was not until a number of years later, while reading the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, that she experienced what the truth really is. And the experience of the source of that truth was to transform her whole life. In her book Essays on Woman, Stein dedicates a chapter to the nature and vocation of woman. As a thinker who seeks to ground her thinking in that which is most radical, most fundamental, Stein turns her attention to the Book of Genesis where the creation of man and woman is recounted. God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, He created them as male and female. Humanity is, according to Stein, a dual species, masculine and feminine. Humanity's essence, nature, is like God's. And since God does not create purposeless beings, the nature of humanity is also finalized; by this, I mean, in keeping with Stein's thought, which is not only theological in this point, but also philosophical, that man as male and female is created for a purpose: this purpose is a calling, a vocation, which is inscribed in the very nature of man. The person's nature and his or her life-course are not therefore something fortuitous, but rather the very work of God. It is God Who calls each human being, each individual, in a personal way - He calls man and woman to something very specific. Following Stein's analysis of Genesis which concerns humanity, we see how a common vocation is assigned to both man and woman. Man, as male and female, are both called to a three-fold vocation: they are to be the image of God, to bring forth posterity, and to be masters over the earth. Each one is to carry out this three-fold vocation as male or female, that is, according to each one's masculinity or femininity.22 Created a being among other beings, man recognizes that he is unlike the other beings; he is alone. Man is conscious of being alone through his very body, he is a body among other bodies, but he is separated from these bodies in that he is a person, for the body of man expresses who he is. Unlike the other beings around him, man is called to subdue and master the earth, to have dominion over it. It is man who names everything in creation; this capacity to name things is derived from his understanding of things; man is an intellectual being who knows that no other thing is similar to him: his knowledge of who he is, is deduced from the knowledge of what he is not. In addition, on receiving the injunction not to eat the forbidden tree lest he die, man experiences that he is a free being, capable of determining himself: that "living being" who is man is liable to non-existence. We see then that man is distinct from other beings: having been created in the image of God, man is related to God, and he is alone in this. The distinction and relatedness of man accounts for the transcendence peculiar to the person: only a being like himself can complement him. Consequently, it can be said that man is alone not only because he is unlike other beings around him, but especially because there is no other being like him. So, we find in Genesis: "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him"(2:18). The creation of the woman takes place, as we know, while man is asleep. This sleep indicates a passage from non-being, a return to the moment prior to creation. And from this sleep, solitary man emerges in his double unity as male and female. The woman is created like him, on the basis of the same humanity: there is a somatic homogeneity, which is expressed in the words: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (Gn 2:23). With the help of the woman, man as male recognizes his own humanity. We have here the existence of the person for the person; from the very beginning of man, he is made to live in communion with the other; in this way, he mirrors that communio personarum, so characteristic of the Divine Persons: "Man became the 'image and likeness of God' not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons which man and woman form right from the beginning."23 The female is thus the male's suitable companion, she is, as it were, another I. In her, the male is able to look upon his own nature, she is his counterpart, so that they do in effect resemble each other: "yet not entirely," as Stein writes, "but rather, they complement each other as one hand does the other."24 The male and the female are both physically and personally complementary. They have the same human nature, and yet are two distinct corporeal and personal ways of being. In the Genesis account of the origin of man, the naked body, in its masculinity and femininity, is seen as good, as a gift, which brings about the communion of persons, whereby each becomes a gift for the other. The male will cling to his wife and they will become one flesh. This signifies, according to Stein, "that we are to consider the life of the initial human pair as the most intimate community of love, that their faculties before the fall were in perfect harmony as within one single being."25 The male and the female mirror God's very life, that is, the Trinitarian life, as they establish communion with one another, a community of love, which is meant to be life-giving. God creates because of love and what is thus created is good. So, God created man as male and female and from their physical and personal union of love, of self-giving, life is to be brought forth. Masculinity and femininity are thus linked to fecundity. The body expresses more than just sexual reactivity; it expresses the person in his or her masculinity or femininity, and thus in his or her fecundity. To deny this is to deny the language of the body, its signifying character, and the truth of the person. The person is fecundity, endowed with the creative capacity of giving himself or herself freely. But the original order established by God was soon to be replaced by a state of imbalance due to the Fall: as a result of their sin, the man and the woman no longer participate in God's vision of His creation; their relationship to each other changes because their relationship to God has been radically altered. And as Stein ably notes: "The serene community of love is ended. But something else has emerged of which they were not aware before; they recognize they are naked and they are ashamed."26 In the state of original innocence, male and female were naked, and yet were not ashamed, because they shared in God's vision of creation as good. Once this state is lost, a new situation arises which brings with it a new experience of the body: they are ashamed at their nakedness. This experience of shame alters the relationship to the other: the other is no longer willed for his or her own sake, as he or she is willed by the Creator, as an objective good, but rather as a subjective good; the subject is reduced here to an object. Once shame is experienced, the vision had of the other is distorted because it no longer participates in the original vision of the mystery of creation. The experience of shame indicates that both the male and the female have closed themselves and their very hearts to what comes from God and have opened themselves to what comes from the world. They are ashamed of their bodies, precisely because of concupiscence, of lust, which is a new way of looking at each other. No longer do they participate in God's vision, in His knowledge of things, which is to see that all is good. The man sees, looks, at the woman in a different way, which no longer corresponds to the original vision and truth of the world.27 In this state of privation, the difference of the sexes was not understood, as it was originally meant, in their complementarity, but rather as an element of mutual confrontation of the persons. There then begins a battle between lust and love, in which concupiscence reduces the person's self-control and thus the free gift of the person to the other. The body becomes, therefore, an object of lust, an object to be appropriated. As Edith Stein herself puts it, in this state of interior imbalance in the person due to the Fall, it is the woman in particular who is most affected, for the woman will not only experience suffering in childbirth but she will also be punished by subjugation to the man. As Stein notes: "That he will not be a good master can be seen in his attempt to shift responsibility for the sin from himself onto his wife."28 "After their Fall," then, Stein further writes, "the relationship between them is transformed from a pure partnership of love to a relationship of sovereignty and subordination and is distorted by concupiscence."29 And she goes on to say forcefully: "The relationship of the sexes since the Fall has become a brutal relationship of master and slave. Consequently, woman's natural gifts and their best possible development are no longer considered; rather, man uses her as a means to achieve his own ends in the exercise of his work or in pacifying his own lust."30 And yet, in the order of redemption, it is precisely the woman who is charged with the battle against evil and death. Stein wrote that woman is to be God's instrument against evil. Since the culture which confronts us today is a culture of death and violence, having its roots in the Fall, we might say that the woman of today has a special role to play in turning around this culture. And she will be able to play an effective role if she is true to her nature and to her vocation. In this new millennium it would seem that the woman is called to herald in a new age, just as the objective redemption of mankind was aided by the fiat, by the positive response, of a singular woman. The woman is called in particular to promote life and thus to cultivate the person. Stein affirms that from the very beginning of time it was intended that woman's life would be more strongly affected by procreation and the education of posterity. It is the woman who is more properly entrusted with the guardianship of life. Inscribed in her nature is the calling to be a mother, or to freely choose virginity and thus spiritual motherhood, which like physical motherhood, demands spousal love, that is, the gift of self. Although it is obviously true that the body of the woman is disposed for child-bearing, she is to give life not only according to the body, but also according to the spirit, for which reason she must engage in a more active and creative part of her motherhood by cultivating the child's spirit. "The uncultivated nature of the child necessitates care, protection and guidance in the development of his faculties. Because of the close bodily tie between child and mother, because of woman's specific tendency to sympathize and to serve another life, as well as her more acute sense of how to develop the child's faculties, the principal share of the child's education is assigned to woman."31 The mother thus cares for the child bodily and spiritually, by forming and educating the child. The woman is thus called to be a mother, that is, to give life and to nurture life, to care for those beings with whose life she is entrusted. She is, in addition, called to create a home for those in her care; just as her body creates the first home for the human being nurturing the development of the child within her womb, she is to create an environment around her which will promote not only physical growth but also intellectual and ethical growth. As Stein puts it: "Part of her natural feminine concern for the right development of the beings surrounding her involves the creation of an ambience, of order and beauty conducive to their development."32 The woman thus has a special affinity and sensitivity for both moral and aesthetic values. Perhaps now more than ever before, we need women who will be true to this part of their vocation. As the sociologist Peter Berger says: "Modern man has suffered the profound effects of the 'lack of a home.' The correlate of the migratory character of his experience of society and of himself has been constituted by what we could call a metaphysical loss of the 'home.' This situation is without a doubt psychologically difficult to bear, and for this reason has brought about its own nostalgias: the nostalgia of a situation in which one feels at ease, in which 'one feels at home' in society, [at home] with oneself and, lastly, [at home] in the universe."33 The world itself seems to be home-less - it no longer has the warmth of a home, it appears hostile and even dehumanizing. It is the woman who has to return to the world its home-like character, so that it be conducive to personal growth. Because the woman is a giver and protectress of life on more than one level, it is appropriate to her nature and to her calling that she know what is good for her offspring, for those entrusted to her care. She is gifted with the special quality of understanding the other, of perceiving what is good, what is of moral value for the other. According to Stein, "[The woman] seems more capable than man of feeling a more reverent joy in creatures; [a joy which] requires a particular kind of perception in being an inherent spiritual function and a singularly feminine one. Evidently, this quality is related to woman's mission as a mother which involves an understanding of the total being and of specific values. It enables her to understand and to foster organic development, the special, individual destiny of every living being. This awareness of the needs of the living being benefits not only her posterity but all creatures as well. It particularly benefits a man in making her a companion and helpmate appreciative of his aspirations."34 Because she understands and feels with the other, she intuits the needs of others. The gift of empathy, according to Stein, is a particularly feminine quality, whereby the woman experiences, through the actions or the corporeal expressions of the other, the very nucleus of the person. She enters into the world of the other, by penetrating into the experience of the other, by knowing - not in a discursive fashion - what the other is going through, and thus sharing the other's subjectivity. It is this gift of empathy which enables the woman to enter into an almost immediate communion with others, to vibrate, as it were, with them, to perceive their needs, their joys, their sorrows. The singular gift of empathy is opposed to self-referentiality; it is, on the contrary, the capacity to establish intersubjective communication, to put oneself in the place of the other, and to be one with the other.35 It is no wonder that with this interpersonal gift, the woman is more loving, more caring, more understanding, and thus entrusted with human life. It is precisely this sensitivity for the person and for the good of the person which women today need to contribute to society, which has, in many ways, depersonalized man. The vocation, the qualities, and concerns of the feminine nature are to be realized not only in the home but also in the workplace. Stein was of the opinion that all of a woman's qualities could be put to use in any and every profession. Times have evolved in such a way that for Stein there is no longer "an absolute differentiation between the duties of the sexes, i.e., that the woman should assume the domestic duties and man the struggle for livelihood."36 As Stein puts it: "The victories of natural science and technology which progressively replaced human labor by mechanical means brought to women a great liberation and a desire to use their nascent powers in another way."37 "The fact that all powers which the man possesses are present in the feminine nature as well - even though they may generally appear in different degrees and relationships - is an indication they should be employed in corresponding activity."38 The powers of knowledge, enjoyment, and creativity, present in the male, are also present in the woman, but differently, because as we have already noted, the male and the female are two distinct ways of being human. Stein was of the opinion that "wherever the circle of domestic duties is too narrow for the wife to attain the full formation of her powers, both nature and reason concur that she reach out beyond this circle."39 Thus, as we are constantly seeing in our society, a woman will reach beyond the home for the full development of her powers and qualities. The only reservation that Stein adds to this is that neither the wife's, nor the husband's, professional activities jeopardize domestic life, i.e., "the community of life and formation consisting of parents and children."40 For Stein, "Any social condition is an unhealthy one which compels married women to seek gainful employment and makes it impossible for them to manage their home. And it should be accepted as normal that the married woman be restricted to domestic life at a time when her household duties exact her total energies."41 Now, the feminine qualities of feeling, intuition, empathy, and adaptability which come into play in domestic life also have a role in the woman's activity outside of her home. Her gifts for caring and understanding, for perceiving the good and encouraging the gifts of the other, for creating a welcoming atmosphere wherever she may be, may all be used in the workplace for the service and the development of others. According to Stein, "Since woman is mainly concerned with serving people and making provisions for them, she is able to function well in all educational and medical professions, in all social work, in the arts which depict humanity, as well as in the business world and in public and parochial administration."42 It would seem that there is virtually no profession, no work, which is closed to women. Stein also notes that whenever one's professional work is not particularly preferred by one - such as it may happen in our troubled economic times - the woman can still make use of her powers and qualities in the service of others, by being sympathetic and charitable to her colleagues, by using her creativity and inventiveness in perhaps promoting new initiatives, with a view to contributing to the good of her associates. Obviously, to look to the common good and not just to the individual good "requires a high degree of personal maturity and an unconditional good will in doing one’s best in any given situation."43 Stein rightly declares that "Such a perspective can hardly be attained without understanding that the circumstances are God-given, that one's work is service to God, and that the gifts which God gives must be developed to His glory in this work."44 It is, for this reason, in part, that Stein considers that at the core of all women's education should be religious education. If the woman is to promote the moral and aesthetic values so necessary for the cultivation of the person, she is to take care of her inner formation, that is, the formation of her soul, through her emptying of self, of those hyper-feminine or hyper-hysterical tendencies, in order to thus open herself to the others and to God.45 Finally, in order to rejoin our introduction, let us once again emphasize relationality. The woman's essentially relational way of being can inject new life into our world: we have already seen the demise of the modern age; the postmodern age - that age in which we presently live - needs the sensitivity of women who are faithful to their nature and vocation. Edith Stein provides us with some keen insights into an ontology of woman - a study of the woman's being, nature, and role. Alice Ramos ENDNOTES 1. Anastasia Toufexis, “Coming from a Different
Place,” Time, Fall 1990, p. 64. |